Morgirion - None Left To Worship

In the grand tradition of supreme extreme metal demos, Morgirion's None Left To Worship has comical cover art (sorry artist Laura Hansen). I mean, yeah hairy bear arm raising a mallet, prepared to crush the rafters of a hilltop church is awesome but when it's drawn with the talent you'd see a gifted child actor in a horror movie scribble on their bedroom wall I'm not as impressed. There are snakes evaporating from the earth, and a mutated goat head with six eyes looming ready to... I don't know... ask for a six-lense set of glasses, demand the local townspeople to trim the hair around it's ears, or some other bizarre goatly request. Also in the underground simmers a tradition of there being no relation between the quality of cover art correlating to the quality of killer music. Evidence is abound all over the place but for starters there's this twenty-page thread on Metal Archives documenting some pretty hideous artwork (I'm not sure how Spectrum of Death or Terror Squad made appearances, but they did somehow) with plenty of great albums showing up among the pages. Ultimately, Morgirion offers sick and twisted black metal buoyed by the lo-fi, some punk splatter, and momentary droughts of melody.

There is a lo-fi element drizzled into the production by virtue of the live recording aspect of the material presented here. There is no feedback, however, and the overall recording has enough clarity to distinguish riffs and notes. Raspy guitars saw through the magnetic filament's contents with respect and authority (I'm guessing from the loudness of the guitar, the recording device was placed closest to the guitars in the rehearsal room). Equally vicious is the saw-throated attack of "D." While I wish his exploits were slightly louder, as a demo, his energy still impregnates the ears with vigor. He doubles on bass well. "J" on drums fills the percussive elements with bombastic fills such as in "None Left To Worship," where the bridges launch into tirades of tremolo notes and blast beats. "B," on guitars, smears small but integral segments of melody into the tracks which appear almost nonchalantly.

Highlights for me are definitely the title track, "None Left To Worship," where interplay between bass and guitar late in the track generate opportunities to lose oneself in the material quite deeply for a couple minutes. Side B starts out with the powerful "Infiltration of Divine Entity." Probably my favorite track, the back and forth fret mashing intro leads into violent vocals tucked among a series of riff with sparse, yet emphasized, quarter (or half) note rests. The execution of these rests indicate to me this is also probably the band's favorite track to play. There is a bit of late 90's / early millennium Darkthrone blackened punk to be found in the home stretch of the song as well. "The Pulse of Death" and "A Cancer Now Served" sit at the even spots in track list. Both are solid ("A Cancer Now Served" especially), as is Morgirion here in general. This cassette is a good representation of what the underground has to offer. Cool tape all around (even the silly artwork!). I'm checking out their full length immediately.